Resistindo ao Senhor e profetizando vida : a construção do evangelho disruptor de Ventura Profana

Abstract

This research focuses on the work of the multi-artist Ventura Profana. She borned in Salvador, Bahia, and raised in a Baptist family in the cities of Catu, Bahia, and later Rio de Janeiro; she identifies herself as a “missionary pastor, evangelist singer,” as well as a songwriter, writer, and visual artist. The objective is to investigate how her performances and the various materialities she mobilizes become a mode of re-existence for bodies historically dehumanized and erased by Euro-Christian religion, based on her lived experience as a Black Travesti, in Brazil. As a theoretical framework, we draw on the notions of “textual landscapes” (Mello Vianna; Vaz; Santos, 2018), “materialities of communication” (Gumbrecht, 2010), “heterotopias” (Foucault, 2013), “oraliture” (Martins, 2021), and “travecamethodologies” (Ravena, 2022), in addition to contextualizing the inscription of the Western modern project onto our territory through colonial violence (Bispo dos Santos, 2015; Foucault, 1988; Carneiro, 2023; Vergueiro, 2015; Nascimento, 2021; Mbembe, 2016; Njeri, 2021; Guimarães-Silva, 2023). This framework enables us to reflect on the forms of subalternization and annihilation (both physical and symbolic) imposed on Black, gender-dissident corporealities in the Brazilian context, as well as on their processes of resistance and re-existence through art. Methodologically, we draw inspiration from the approaches of “textual landscapes” and “oralitures” to identify the movements she transcreates in order to forge the Gospel of the End and build her congregation. As an empirical scope, we selected one type of production from each materiality that would allow us to discuss or highlight an aspect of her practice, even if these dimensions interrelate – arriving at three works by Ventura Profana: the digital collage "A Primeira Missa no Brasil" (2017); the music video "Eu Não Vou Morrer" (2020); and the musical performance "Todo Cuidado É Pouco" (2025). Thus, we take the idea of a “gira midática” (Costa, 2024) as a methodological procedure to analyze the units of this set.